1. Read the CVC guide on your profile page, there is A LOT of info in there that will answer many of your initial questions.

2. In Global Chat, read the chat help(blue ?) in the upper right corner. Instructions there on whispering, blocking, reporting and all that good stuff. By the way, to whisper someone who hasn't posted in gc type !user name: Message. For example: !Lessifer: You are awesome!

3. Outposts: Buy them early and buy them often! For your first 10 or so Trader levels stick to the 3 hour outposts, you can have up to 3x your trader level, ignore the overage penalty and build them in the furthest locations on your list. After you've got around 20, start building the 24 hour ones if they are available. Keep your close locations for these as you don't want to add a distance penalty on top of the over limit penalty. From then on keep a good mix of 3 hr and 24 hr outposts, enough to keep your trader level moving and to bring in some much needed supplies and cash.

4. Dueling: Start dueling early and try to keep your duel skill level as close to your overall level as possible. Duel skill is the highest contributor to your duel attack/defense score so keeping up with it will keep you from being a target. The best defense is a good offense.

5. Healing: Healing is nice, brings you friends and makes them like you; BUT it is not as important as dueling. Save the healing for when you're in a hurry or your duel skill is maxed. To get healed by others post "/medic" in global chat, without the quotations.

Ok, that's it for now, will post more later. Stay calm and alive out there.

More tips:6. Hunting: The Assault hunt option yields the most cash, but is also the hardest. If you have the funds, always hire an ally when you plan to hunt, an ally can take a hit for you and even do a little damage themselves. Also, look for places where other survivors are present, people who have checked in on FourSquare will appear in your fight and act as meat shields, they will take hits but won't do any damage. A meat shield can mean the difference between having to use an expensive medpack or wasting more supplies restocking.*side note on medpacks, keep them for when you are in a fight, if you need healing between hunts/duels ask your friends. See #5 Healing above.

7. Scavenging: The middle Explore option seems to yield the best return for experience used. While scavenging, the brighter/bigger moving dots are zombies, avoid them, you can pass over them quickly but if you have lag you may get caught. Non-moving yellow dots are supplies, white dots are miscellaneous items(or duel items). In locked rooms, green dots are cash. *side note on locked rooms, they don't add experience to your scavenge skill, so make sure you get some regular scavenges in as well, although the locked rooms do give the best rewards. There is a 1 hour respawn time for locked doors.

Make friends! They'll randomly show up in battles to take damage/return damage & more importantly they will be able to heal you. The amount of friends you have contributes to your duel score as well, though keep in mind that once on your friends list you won't be able to duel that person nor them you. Just post your friend code (aka FC) on Global Chat or copy other people's FCs from there.

As your scavenge level increases you get more rewards per scavenge, it goes up slightly with every level, BUT there are certain levels where the scavenge reward goes up a lot, the first of which is scavenge level 23, your rewards will double once you hit this point. When I find the next big scavenge level jump I'll post it here so stay tuned